After four attempts, I finally bagged The Ledgeling! Our approach was via the north gully, where we climbed the West Buttress and rappelled down the SE Buttress. The objective hazard on the gully was extremely high, tons of boulders precariously perched on rotten snow, and frequent rockfall kept us on high alert throughout the climb.
The climb included one short pitch with low 5th moves, followed by a bushy walk to the summit. From there, we continued traversing on the south side of the Sky Pilot Group and scrambled up Ledge via the standard route. The ledge running across the south face was quite interesting and made for a fun technical section.
Our descent was a full loop: we contoured around the mountain, bypassed the South Ridge of Sky Pilot, dropped down into the valley north of Goat Ridge, climbed back up to the West Buttress of Sky Pilot, descended to Stadium Glacier, and then followed the standard approach back to the logging road.
After all the up and down over scree and rocky terrain, we were exhausted and decided to bail on Co-Pilot.
Overall, it was a very unique and memorable mountaineering loop!
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